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Topic: This is getting rediculous. (Read 4256 times)

I went into town today to pick up some household essentials. Toilet paper, milk, aspirin...stuff like that. Decided to pick up some .22LR while I was restocking essential consumables.

The Wal-Martians were out, the gun store was out, and even the freaking hardware store was out. I quit looking after three strikes because I'm not out. I've just noticed that there are times when too much just isn't enough.

My wife works in a sporting goods store. Their regular customers know what day of the week their stock arrives, and are outside the door at opening time. Within hours (or minutes!) of the store opening, they sell out of their week's supply of the most popular calibers, including .22.

Every week since Sandy Hook. They used to sell mostly the ammo that was on sale that week. Now everything goes for full price, and they could sell ten times as much if they could get it.

Fortuna Fortis Paratus“In the house of a wise man are stores of food, wine, and oil, but the foolish man devours all he has.” Proverbs 21:20"We are content with discord, we are content with alarms, we are content with blood, but we will never be content with a master." -Pashtun malik, 1815

I'm scheduled for a range trip this weekend with my wife. I have ammo in stock, but the replacement cost makes me think twice about how much I'm going to shoot of what.

It's a shame to think that way. I've pretty much turned over and reformed most of my (very) mini-arsenal (save my trusty pump shotgun ) , and my wife hasn't shot any of the new stuff. Will concentrate on the .22LR end, but the shortages of that round testify to its utility and value.

Ammunition has been overpriced too long. I smell a bubble. I wouldn't want to be caught trying to sell $0.25/round ammunition at $1.00 in large quantities when the bottom falls out.

I bet that somewhere in Texas or Idaho there are some people quietly building serious capacity and are going to dump a bunch of ammunition once they have the distribution worked out. If I had a few billion from natural gas money, I'd be doing this just to tick off the Obama administration.

Fortuna Fortis Paratus“In the house of a wise man are stores of food, wine, and oil, but the foolish man devours all he has.” Proverbs 21:20"We are content with discord, we are content with alarms, we are content with blood, but we will never be content with a master." -Pashtun malik, 1815

9x18 isn't really stocked in large quantities, and almost all of it is imported, except some specialized defensive JHP loadings that some domestic manufacturers have started making. So if stores run out, it takes a while to restock.

Now, if Russia, the Ukraine, and other former EastBloc countries decided to cash in on some of what they've got stockpiled...that could be a bubble, and pop pretty quick.

Other relatively low volume stuff will stay scarce for a while, until the demand for the higher volume stuff slacks off enough. Like .380 back in late 2008-09. If you're an ammo maker, and you can run, say, 5 lines, you're going to run whatever your top 5 calibers are...say, 9x19, .40, .45, .223, and .308. Or maybe no .308 and two lines running 9mm.

And you do that until you get caught up on the high volume stuff, then you worry about lower volume stuff. (I'm borrowing that from Tam at VFTP.)

Fortuna Fortis Paratus“In the house of a wise man are stores of food, wine, and oil, but the foolish man devours all he has.” Proverbs 21:20"We are content with discord, we are content with alarms, we are content with blood, but we will never be content with a master." -Pashtun malik, 1815

Grandson wants me to take him to the range so tonight I decided to visit the SuperWalmart and see what they had in ammo. Almost totally sold out. The clerk told me they have not gotten any .22 in the last 6 weeks. The only one of the popular calibers they had was 4 boxes of .357 FMJ target ammo at $28 per box. They had maybe 1/3 of the long gun display case filled. They had "3 boxes per customer" signs, but nothing to sell and no word on when they might see more.

Fortuna Fortis Paratus“In the house of a wise man are stores of food, wine, and oil, but the foolish man devours all he has.” Proverbs 21:20"We are content with discord, we are content with alarms, we are content with blood, but we will never be content with a master." -Pashtun malik, 1815

On the other hand, if he had 1000 rounds in stock already, why would he want to.

Well, if his target stock level was, say, 2,500. If he one bought 100/month for the next 15 mos, he would arrive at their target with a minimum of thought given to market timing. It would've been better had he started two, or even five, years ago. But for someone whose inventory levels are sitting below their comfort zone, dollar cost averaging isn't the worst thing they could do.

Quote from: oldguy52

The small gain doesn't justify the large price.

One would be better off to invest that money in some other prep for now.

I agree that other preps might take priority in temporary periods of madness. But I'm thinking this madness is not going to be just a matter of weeks. Rather than panicking and buying 1,500 rounds right now on a credit card, most folk would probably be better off dollar cost averaging with a balanced approach across all categories of preps, it seems to me.

I contacted a Wal-Martian that should know. They tell me that the warehouse is splitting up received ammo and shipping stores partial orders as they come in. This superstore got two boxes (100 rounds of .22LR each) their last shipment. They don't know when more will come in. They don't know what to say, long story short.

Shot shells, not buckshot, not slugs, but #6 small game shot, are limited to two (25 round) boxes per customer. And they don't have many of those, either.

Sheriff Joe's advice about using the trusty ol' double barrel for protection? Yeah. That's been 'overtaken by events'.

Don't worry so much about not being able to get your evile black rifle. Worry about what you've got once you've gotten it. What you have may well turn out to be a stick. And not a particularly effective stick, at that.

Grandson wants me to take him to the range so tonight I decided to visit the SuperWalmart and see what they had in ammo. Almost totally sold out. The clerk told me they have not gotten any .22 in the last 6 weeks.

Today the largest Gun Show in Colorado came to Denver. The Grandson had never been to a gun show so we went there before going to the range. I had been buying boxes of 500 to 555 rounds of 22LR at Walmart for $18 to $20 each. In this huge gun show there were only two dealers with 22LR for sale. One had just two boxes left at $50 per box. The other had a somewhat bigger supply at $75 per box. Any dealer that had ammo, or magazines, or "black rifles" was mobbed. I bought a few small items and left.

I imagine anyone who works for an ammo manufacturer is clocking a bunch of overtime. Along with companies that make components.

The question is, how long will it take for all of this to work it's way through the system?

The one ammo supplier on my bookmark list that a) actually makes the rounds themselves, and b) is posting times, was backordered 18 weeks last I looked, about a week ago. And they're not a big company.

I think we're looking at 9-12 months before things normalize, at best.

Fortuna Fortis Paratus“In the house of a wise man are stores of food, wine, and oil, but the foolish man devours all he has.” Proverbs 21:20"We are content with discord, we are content with alarms, we are content with blood, but we will never be content with a master." -Pashtun malik, 1815

If you have 'enough', sit tight till the madness subsides.If you don't have 'enough', then dollar cost averaging is a good idea. Yeah, you're going to pay the "stupid tax" by not being prepared already; but oh well. We've all done dumb things and paid the price. Learn from this and move on.'Enough ammo' is worth paying extra if you have to.

Fortuna Fortis Paratus“In the house of a wise man are stores of food, wine, and oil, but the foolish man devours all he has.” Proverbs 21:20"We are content with discord, we are content with alarms, we are content with blood, but we will never be content with a master." -Pashtun malik, 1815

Fortuna Fortis Paratus“In the house of a wise man are stores of food, wine, and oil, but the foolish man devours all he has.” Proverbs 21:20"We are content with discord, we are content with alarms, we are content with blood, but we will never be content with a master." -Pashtun malik, 1815

Fortuna Fortis Paratus“In the house of a wise man are stores of food, wine, and oil, but the foolish man devours all he has.” Proverbs 21:20"We are content with discord, we are content with alarms, we are content with blood, but we will never be content with a master." -Pashtun malik, 1815

Offgridsurvival is a solid site. They post good prep strategy/information and their news categories are well attributed and seemingly not prone to hyperbole.

I monitor hundreds of blogs and news sites and the ammo shortage is quite real and widespread according to numerous verifiable reports.

The latest info from the fringes is that Big Sister is staging huge caches of ammunition around the country. Are there legitimate reasons that DHS has purchased so much ammo or are the crazies right that they're staging resources for martial law following a massive social dislocation?

Do I treat Glocks like I treat my lawn mowers? No, I treat them worse. I treat my defensive weapons like my fire extinguishers and smoke detector - annual maintenance and I expect them to work when needed